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Do you ever get tired of growing up? I do. Mostly because I’m tired of waking up to find out that someone I admire has died. Or that our government isn’t a bad dream … but I digress.

There are levels to how we appreciate music — at least, in my mind there are. There’s the music that we like because it’s what our parents listened to when we were young and it reminds us of that time. There’s music that we liked in high school, music that we liked in college and music we like as adults. But there’s a special place for the music that we discovered in the years when we were first cultivating our own tastes apart from the stuff our parents listened to.

There’s something kind of nice — safe, even — about nostalgia. It’s not living in the past, but looking back fondly. For me, it can sometimes help me change the frame of mind that I’m in (which is usually something I need to do a lot of during this time of year. Raise your hand if you hate winter!).

It always amazes me how memories are not only visceral, but sensory, as well. A lot of people associate different smells with different memories. I’ve been known to do this from time to time. I’ll say something weird like, “Oh, it smells like 2nd grade in here!” (crayons and recycled paper) or “This place smells like my 5th grade teacher!” (heavy perfume masking alcohol).

Music, for me, is the best way to evoke different emotions and get at that nostalgia. That’s probably not really shocking, especially after all the attention I’ve given to music and music-related posts lately.

And nostalgia, for whatever reason, tends to come back most frequently to childhood. For me, that happens when I get stressed out and sort of tired of being an adult. I suspect it’s that way for a lot of people. We get tired of all of the hassles and responsibilities of growing up and we just miss the days when our biggest responsibility was getting our times tables finished for homework or remembering to take a jump rope for recess.

In truth, I have an actual post planned for this blog. I wanted to write it last week, but waited until I got some more resources. As I type this, it’s 12:59 a.m. on Friday, February 3rd. The last time I looked up, it was Sunday afternoon. I have no idea what happened to this week, but I was buried under a mountain of work and some other matters that needed my focus. So hopefully we’ll get to that one next week. Today, though, I want to share some music.

If you read this blog frequently or you know anything about me, one of my greatest joys is sharing music. It’s why I made people mix tapes as a teenager and why I became a DJ in college. It’s why I’m always trying to get someone to listen to something.

This is music that makes me feel safe because I’ve decided the nostalgia theme is going to be … Parents. What music reminds you of your parents when you were little? Some of it’s going to seem really weird. Keep in mind that 1.) I grew up in the 80s/90s and 2.) I have a really broad taste in music. It’s my “no worries” music. And of course, after I share mine, I’m going to want to know what your list is. So without further ado…

Like this:

Yesterday I visited a community pool for the first time in a number of years. Growing up, we relied on our friends’ swimming pools because there wasn’t one in our community. In fact, the one I went to today was a small one that I’d never been to before, and I went because my aunt was feeling nostalgic: she used to go to that pool when she was a girl, visiting her aunt in the next county. So she and I went. As it turned out, there was a certain charm about this place that made me somewhat nostalgic for a life I’d never experienced.

My own nostalgia started stirring as soon as my aunt told me how she used to come to this town – only twenty minutes away from our own – and stay with her aunt, and come to this pool with her cousin. I started thinking about who I’d gone to stay with as a kid and what family I’d visited. Where I should have felt nostalgic, it was all made up: my entire family had always been right in my town. There’d never been anyone to go visit away from there.

Later, as my aunt attempted to swim laps around parents holding little kids and small children doing handstands and chasing diving sticks, I sat nearby on the edge of the pool with my legs in the water. To my immediate left was the lifeguard and to my immediate right was a group of about six elementary school boys. They kept doing cannonballs and the lifeguard kept yelling at them, and the only thing I could think about was The Sandlot. If you’ve never seen it, you’re missing out. It’s funny, but it’s also nostalgic to the core. I kept expecting the lifeguard to morph into Wendy Pefferkorn and those little boys to become the kids from The Sandlot. When those boys got kicked out of the pool for doing (what else?) obnoxious cannonballs, I started observing other groups further in the distance, and for the rest of the day was struck by the dichotomy of early and late teenage life that was, in some sense, quite idyllic. Continue reading →